life balance

Every year, Dahlia Adler lists prompts on Instagram for writers to share about themselves, their work, and their life. I’ve been tempted to see what made the platform so popular, so this event was a good opportunity.

As a perfectionist, I know what it’s like to feel like our best isn’t good enough, but maybe that’s where our connections to each other can help. Together, we can feel a sense of accomplishment for when we’ve done our best.

We often have more ideas for stories than we actually write, and somehow, we choose and prioritize. Why might we not write a story idea that we’re passionate about—and is there anything we can do to overcome those reasons?

After we had to say goodbye to our cat last weekend and were debating the “right” time to get a new pet, I was reminded of a lesson from the writing world. When we encounter problems, the advice isn’t to give up or wait a year. It’s to try, try again.

Chronic problems can affect our ability to write and are sometimes caused by typing. But we have options to help us overcome the aches and pains of writing so that we can once again escape into our characters and stories.

As writers, we can burn out in so many different aspects of our lives that it’d be a surprise if we never burned out. And if we don’t deal with our burnout, the problems are likely to get worse, so we might need to make changes.

This time of year is ripe for wrap-ups of what we accomplished over the previous year. However, it’s easy to reach the end of 2017 and feel like a failure for not accomplishing enough or not reaching a certain goal or milestone.